them and onto the dais.
I feel cold from head to feet. It can’t be her.
“Madra,” she says, putting a hand on the aviana’s shoulder.
Madra, the leader of the avianas, turns around and opens her arms
to let her wings open to their full span.
“I told you to stay in your nest,” Madra hisses.
It can’t be her. It’s a spell. A mirage. She twists hers hands,
freshly painted in henna, and smiles nervously. I want to run to her,
but find I can’t move. She gets past Madra’s wings and throws her arms
around me. The air escapes my lungs, and as my thoughts spin, I find
it hard to breathe.
Rishi.
And she’s got wings .
18
On the wings of hope I fly!
- Rezo de El Cielo, Deo of all the Skies
“It’s really you!” I hold Rishi so tight, she grunts and asks for
air. I have so many questions I don’t even know how to start. I step
back and hold her face gently. Her nose isn’t swollen anymore, and the
bruise around her eye is covered by makeup. “I can’t believe it.”
“Rishi,” Madra says, more like a scolding mother. “You were to
wait until I questioned the intruders.”
Rishi lets go of me and turns to the aviana. Rishi’s in a long,
lace black dress, tattered all along the bottom, and her purple boots.
Then there’s the small matter of her wings. I reach out and touch
them. They’re long and black and soft. And totally fake. I can see
where the elastic loops are for the arms, but her long, black hair
covers that.
“I told you, Madra. She’s not an intruder. She’s the one I was
telling you about. The girl I was looking for.” Rishi talks to the
bird as if they’re longtime friends.
Then again, Rishi does have a way of taking strangers and making
them feel like they’ve known each other for years. She did the same
thing to me on the first day of freshman year when she found me crying
in the girls’ bathroom. I’d gotten myself lost and then found the
nearest hiding place. She walked me to class and then showed up
afterward to help me find the next one. Now she’s here, and even
though I know it isn’t safe for her, a part of me thanks the Deos she
is.
“What about the man?” Madra asks.
Rishi shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe if we back off a little, Alex
can fill us in on the rest.”
“Us?” I ask. “Rishi, how did you get here?”
She hooks her arm around my shoulder. “Same way you did.”
The ruffle of feathers interrupts her, followed by the heavy thud
of an aviana falling forward. She tries to push herself up but her
body shivers.
Madra runs to the guard and examines her face. “Jesla? What is
it?”
All over the cave, the bird women flap their wings and hoot and
caw for their fallen sister.
Rishi holds on to my hand, and I squeeze. A sense of familiarity
and comfort washes over me.
“Madra,” two more avianas whimper before falling to the ground.
Madra lifts her face to the dark endlessness of the caves. Her
mouth shifts into the golden beak of a hawk. Her cry is loud and full
of pain.
Now’s my chance to take Rishi and get out of here. But then, what
about Nova? How will we find him? How will we get out?
Madra sweeps the first aviana that fell, the one she called Jesla,
into her arms. She gives instructions to take the others into the
caves below.
Then she turns to Rishi and me. “You two! Stay here.”
With a great flap of wings, the avianas disappear farther into the
caves.
• • •
“Tell me everything,” Rishi says.
She leads me to a stream flowing inside the caves. The water glows
blue, reflecting the phosphorescent green moss clinging to the side of
giant boulders. She fills up a waterskin.
I’m so thirsty. I lower myself at the water’s edge and drink as if
there isn’t enough of it on this earth to quench my thirst. It’s the
purest water I’ve ever tasted, and when I’ve had my fill, I sit back
on the cool stone. Rishi sits across from me. Her nose ring sparkles
like the gems in the cave wall behind her. I want to touch her face to
make sure she’s really here. But I hesitate. My magic flutters in my
stomach again. I reach for the loose strand of hair falling over her
face and tuck it back. Rishi is here .
“It’s so good to see you.”
She purses her lips and scowls. “Nice try. I’m still mad at you
for standing me up.”
“The Ghoul Ball,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she says. “Just don’t do things to be sorry for
. Now that you don’t have a choice, tell me. What the hell is going
on?”
So I tell her about my family. About the magic of the brujas and
brujos that exist in the world. About my Deathday and how I tried to
send my powers back to where they came from. I tell her about Nova and
how he’s helping me. When I’m all caught up, she just stares.
“Wow,” she whispers.
“Wow?”
“This is so cool.”
“I don’t think cool is the word I’d use.”
“Alex, you’re crazy. Why would you give up your powers? Imagine
all the things you could do!”
“You don’t get it.” I pull my hand from hers. “Magic destroys.
It’s only brought my family pain and death and loneliness. I thought I
could break the cycle. Instead, I made things worse. I know what I did
was wrong. I didn’t think about the consequences. That’s why I’m here
to fix it. But I can’t do that without Nova.”
We’re quiet for a long time, listening to the hooting whispers of
sleeping birds in nests high above and the ribbit of frog-like
creatures that catch bugs from the stream.
“Your turn,” I tell Rishi. “How did you get here?”
“By the time I realized you weren’t coming, I called your house.
No one answered, so I decided to just go yell at you myself. So then I
pulled up to your house and there’s police circling the block and an
ambulance. The doors and windows looked broken. They put that yellow
tape up all over the place. I went in through your neighbor’s yard and
climbed over the fence. The tree in your yard was doing this really
weird thing, like it was breathing from the giant hole in its trunk. I
could hear you screaming when I got real close. You and that guy.
Also, where did he come from and how come you haven’t mentioned him
before?”
“Wait, wait.” My head is swimming. “You just jumped in after me?”
“Of course I did,” she says. “I thought you were in trouble.
Really, Alex, how could you not tell me about this? I knew your family
was into some weird stuff, but in my head, it was like voodoo or
Santeria or like Scientology or something. This is real magic. You are
really magic.”
She says it with such furor that I don’t want to contradict her.
“When I jumped into the tree, I thought it would lead me to you.”
“Nova said portals are unpredictable. A one-way trip.”
“I don’t know anything about that. I just remember I started
falling through the sky, over this silver river. I lost a lot of
feathers on the way down. One wing is a little loose.” She shimmies
one shoulder to show me. Then, in a low voice, she quickly adds,
“Madra caught me before I fell in the river. They made me an honorary
aviana because of my wings. I told her I needed to find you, but she
said it isn’t safe out there.”
“She’s right,” I say, sounding more like Nova than I’d like. “We
have to get you home. I’ll find a way to get Nova and get out. Then
we’ll figure out a way to make a portal for you.”